Comments on: Not a lie: Valve updates Portal with secret radio broadcast images

By: Anonyman

Anonyman — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“coordinates, blueprints and hailing frequencies…”

Well there goes my plans for the next few weeks.
This is awesome.

By: foop

foop — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Relaxeder posted a good summary in the Steam forum thread

“In a nutshell:

-Portal gets surprise update yesterday afternoon
-People see new mystery achievement
-People play and see the radio in the beginning room now has a green light
-Carry it around and notice it makes strange broadcast interference noises in certain places
-Locate and place all 26 of these mystery radios for achievement
-Smart people yank wav files out of game content folders and run them through steganography programs
-Produces 26 weird cryptic image files in a numbered sequence
-Some dude runs the number string through an md5 hash translator and gets a landline number
-Internet traces it to Kirkland, WA (near Valve HQ)
-People find out its not a phone/fax line but a data line hosting a BBS and telnet it
-Use a clue from one of the files to figure out the BBS user/password login info
-End up with a bunch of weird ASCII artwork
-We’re trying to figure out wtf it means”

I wonder how quickly Valve were expecting this to be worked out? The ability of geeks to crowdsource a solution for this sort of puzzle never ceases to amaze me.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

complete success!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Heh, someone who knows how should apply a Compressed Sensing algorithm to these photographs:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_algorithm/

By: schmod

schmod — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Wow. What a triumph…

By: KremlinLaptop

KremlinLaptop — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I should note, this seems like a huge success.

By: steelwraith

steelwraith — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Yea, glad there aren’t hundreds of thousands dead in the last few weeks.. millions more that die every year from starvation and preventable diseases.. you just spend that time looking for easter eggs in a game that mean f*ck all..

By: ZDepthCharge

ZDepthCharge — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Gosh and how many dead people have you saved? Get a grip, not everyone can (or wants) to be a world saving do-gooder. Humans are humans. We do lots of different things. Accept that or be angry at everyone for the REST OF YOUR LIFE.

By: Dealspwn

Dealspwn — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Wow. Plus they added a new achievement which I simply must get! Excellent update Valve!

Someone already has a youtube Portal playthrough guide too, where to get and place the radios:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7I9yWbs7QU

By: Berk

Berk — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Go on then. Stop commenting and save a life or 10, do your part.

By: KremlinLaptop

KremlinLaptop — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Well, I do hope you never do anything for pleasure or personal enjoyment that doesn’t save the lives of millions of people at the same time. Cause otherwise you’ll look like a mighty fine hypocrite.

…Lighten up, Francis.

By: spejic

spejic — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

We do what we must, because we can, for the good of all of us. Except for the ones who are dead.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

well people kill over games maby this will give them some hope not to do so as it is more then likly is hinting at halflife ep 3 XD who knows im just a hl fan hopeing for that

By: Ari B.

Ari B. — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It’s replay time in a big, big way.

By: GLaDOS

GLaDOS — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.

By: certron

certron — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The forums are going crazy… I just hope someone thinks to use PPP to connect so they can get rid of that EMSI_REQA77E string. Unless I’m wrong, that is. People have gone pretty far down this thread in only 6-8 hours. I expect someone will have solved it by the time I wake up.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

we must make a note here: HUGE SUCCESS!

By: Axx

Axx — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Keep us posted Brandon! This is tooooo cooooooool!

By: Greg TVH

Greg TVH — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m guessing that it’s a message from Black Mesa. I haven’t gotten any of the radios, so I don’t know, but that’s my guess. I’d need someone who can write down Morse code though. I don’t have that skill.

By: Eli the Bearded

Eli the Bearded — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

All I can say is “The medium is the message.”

By: cymk

cymk — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

While a good description of the situation, I doubt Valve has Mr. McLuhan in mind when creating this wonderful puzzle.

I can only hope this puzzle means Valve is working on Half-Life eps. 3 or Portal 2.

But there’s no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

By: Zac

Zac — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Wow, give Valve 2 out of 2 for this viral marketing, and the recent clever Steam/Mac ads.

For those interested in keeping up, this website has pretty much everything discovered so far:
http://blackopsservers.com/blackops/portal/index.html

By: pKp

pKp — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m making a note here : HUGE SUCCESS.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Having fun is forbidden. It has always been forbidden.

By: Axx

Axx — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

For anyone who cares:

There is a Google Wave as Portal-ers try to figure this puzzle out. It’s linked to on the forum thread above.

This thing is getting crazy. Another investigative thread (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1169218&highlight=wave) has revealed that processing the images reveals a code that seems to translate to a BBS telephone number:

from the forums:
~~~~
from zpr23:

“From images: 9459C6CAC8C203B8128B7CC63068D4FD
Translates to BBS#: (425) 822-5251
425 is a Seattle area code.
Calling resulted in what sounded like a modem.
Someone translate that! ”
~~~~

and later:

~~~~
from Jigendaisuki:

“UPDATE ON BBS

Someone has successfully connected to the BBS number

Quote:
I’m in. It’s asking for GLaDOS login and password, and is passing a stream of seemingly random junk.
Quote:
it seems to have limited concurrent connections so I have to outspam the idiots calling it repeatedly, and input before I get randomly booted for some reason.

When the forum threads are linking to google map satellite images of places in Kirkland, WA that the BBS number supposedly belongs to, well…you know you are onto a pretty tasty puzzle. ;)